Indulgences
by DT Maxwell
Summary: Even the ship's ranking Cerberus officer would occasionally take the time to indulge in some rest and relaxation.  Not that she'd tell anyone. First in the Downtime series.


**Disclaimer:** _Mass Effect_ and all related concepts and characters belong to Bioware; I'm just having fun in their sandbox.  
><strong>Prompt:<strong> Miranda, downtime  
><strong>Notes:<strong> For the Weekly Insanity Round at me_challenge on LiveJournal. I don't really consider myself a Miranda fan, although did grow on me, and I ended up liking the idea of Miss Cerberus letting her hair down, as it were.

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><p>Miranda finally finished the last report of the day at 2300 ship time, sent it to Shepard's terminal for tomorrow morning's briefing, then shut down her own terminal. She stood and stretched, her vertebrae cracking satisfactorily, and shuffled to her private bathroom, stifling a yawn as she went.<p>

Fifteen minutes later, she padded back into her small bedroom, towel drying her hair. Miranda knew she currently looked nothing like the image of the imperious Cerberus officer the crew normally expected and she readily projected – barefoot for one, make-up gone entirely, and her skin-tight uniform replaced by faded flannel pajama bottoms and a pink cotton camisole. In her off-duty hours, she went with comfort rather than sex appeal.

(Not that sex appeal didn't have its uses. After all, a man staring at her breasts was too busy to notice the bullet she was about to put in his head.)

She tossed her towel into the laundry bin just inside her bathroom door, then turned to look through her nightstand drawer for a hair tie. She finally found one in the mess of clips, pins, and brushes, and combed her hair with her fingers a few times to get the tangles out before pulling her hair into a loose ponytail. That taken care of, she walked through her office area and exited onto the main part of the deck.

She peered around the corner cautiously; she knew the whole crew's schedules by heart and the only people who should be awake were the skeleton crews in the CIC and down in engineering, but one could never be too careful. Luck was with her tonight, though: no one was sitting at the mess table, the kitchen itself was deserted, and even the lights through the medbay windows on the opposite side of the ship were dimmed.

Perfect.

Miranda tiptoed toward the kitchen, being extra careful not to stub her toes against the table or stools, and reached her goal. She eased open the refrigerator door – the thing had the obnoxious tendency to squeak despite Gardner's best efforts – and pulled out a plastic container stuffed full of brownies.

(The higher quality the ingredients, the more effort Gardner put into cooking, and it turned out the man didn't just love to cook, he loved to _bake. _The food budget had easily become the biggest on the ship after fuel, but even Miranda conceded it was well worth it. Excellent food meant a happy crew, after all.

Also, Gardner's mushroom and Swiss omelettes were nothing short of divine.)

She set the container on the countertop and reached up into one of the cabinets for a napkin. She unfolded it and set it next the plate before opening the container and selecting a brownie and placing it on the napkin. After a moment's hesitation, she selected another. A little indulgence never hurt anybody, and Gardner would end up making another batch anyway with the way the crew went through his baked goods. She wrapped the brownies in the napkin, poured herself a glass of milk, and put both the milk and container of brownies away before escaping back to her quarters with her late night snack.

Miranda set her glass and the wrapped brownies on her nightstand, then unceremoniously fell back on her bed and wiggled under the covers. She stacked her pillows behind her and reached into the nightstand's middle drawer, rummaging for only a few moments before pulling out a lovingly worn paperback copy of _Sense and Sensibility._ She set the book in her lap and then unwrapped the brownies, picking one up as she settled back against the pillows. Humming contently, she took a bite out of her treat, flipped her book open to where she'd last left off, and began to read.


End file.
